Page 15

“If I tell you to leave, you leave,” he said. “Do you understand? That boy may have been working on someone else’s orders.”

“Or whoever pissed him off is in the crowd,” Yves said. “Convenient for them if a mob kills him off, isn’t it?”

Charon was impressed. For someone who grew up in the country, Yves had the right turn of mind to guess what Charon was thinking. “I don’t trust the city guard to treat him gently, either. There could have been noble clients in the House of Silver. They’ll want a quick ending.”

Yves shuddered, but he kept walking. A few others in the crowd tried to follow, but Charon could hear Laurent barking orders in the distance, and the crowd slowly drew back.

The guard house wasn’t far from the Pleasure District, and since most of the people who spent a few hours inside were drunk nobles who’d been kicked out of the various establishments, it was well-maintained.

The guards at the entrance shifted uncomfortably when they saw Charon and Yves, but Yves just smiled.

“His Grace, Duke de Valois, asked for us to interrogate the man who came in from the Pleasure District,” Yves said.

Charon tried not to register his surprise.

Using Sabre’s title and his close proximity to the king was a risky gamble.

Still, it made sense that Sabre would send someone like Yves, who held no title and wouldn’t intimidate the prisoner.

Yves only needed to flutter his lashes and preen a little for the guards to let them through. Charon wanted to make Yves stay in the main office, but now that Yves had introduced them as Sabre’s agents, he couldn’t do so without arousing suspicion. Knowing Yves, he’d probably planned for that.

“Don’t look so grim,” Yves whispered, as they headed down the stairs to the holding cells. “What is he going to do, tremble at me?”

Charon wasn’t concerned about Yves’ safety. He was worried about what Yves might notice about him—the way he recognized injuries from torture, the way he knew how to speak to terrified young men desperate for a comforting voice. But it was too late now.

Charon stepped into the spacious, barely-protected holding cells.

They were lightly furnished for their noble “visitors,” but the boy wasn’t even sitting on the cot set up at the far end of the room.

He was curled up on the floor next to a chair with his knees to his chest, staring into the middle distance.

When Yves explained why they were there, the guard at the desk shrugged.

“They just brought him in,” he said. “If you asked me, I’d say he looks more like a victim of a fire than someone who started it. Get a name out of him if you can, will you?”

Charon didn’t make any promises. He asked for bandages and clean water, which the guard gave him with a befuddled look. He opened the gate to the cell—unlocked, because no noble wanted to think they were actually being detained. The boy shuffled toward the corner of the wall.

“Your dominance isn’t just a part of your voice,” Haris had said, when he’d first trained Nikos in interrogation. “It’s in how you move. If a sorry bastard can’t stand after I’m done with them, you don’t stand either. It makes them think you’re on their side.”

He hadn’t let Nikos speak at all, at first. Nikos had to comfort terrified prisoners without saying a word, fumbling awkwardly through using his dominance in a way he’d never considered before.

It became a tool, something he could use and put away like the rest of an interrogator’s instruments.

It had taken months before Haris had been satisfied enough to let Nikos use his voice again.

Charon sat down a few paces from the boy.

Behind him, he could hear Yves getting to his knees.

Charon didn’t speak. He unwound the bandages he’d taken and set the jug of water on the floor between him and the boy.

The boy stared at the jug before he looked at Charon’s hands—which meant he was more thirsty than afraid.

The boy lasted five minutes before he started inching forward. He half crawled toward the water, but froze when Yves made a sympathetic sound, a habit that Nikos had learned to suppress early on.

“I can bandage your hands,” Charon said, and the boy stared up at him, too afraid to follow his submissive instinct to look down. “Yves, sit next to me so I can show him how it’s done.”

Yves gingerly sat next to Charon, and Charon turned to start wrapping Yves’ fingers.

“If your finger is broken,” Charon said, “it will need a splint. It will hurt at first, but it is a good pain. Like drinking water when your throat is scraped dry. I have felt that before, in the mountains. Are you thirsty?”

The boy stared at him.

“Yves, show him your hand.” Yves held up his bandaged hand.

“That is all that I will do to you, if you allow me.” Charon started unwinding the bandages.

He kept his dominance strong in his voice and his slow, assured movements, but it wasn’t the intimate call of command that he used at the House of Onyx.

There was no expectation in it, just a slow, quiet promise of safety.

Yves was blinking heavily at his side, clearly influenced.

“Would you like me to bandage your hands?”

“Can’t…” the boy glanced at the water jug.

“I will help you with that, as well.”

The boy kept looking at the jug. Charon finished unwrapping Yves’ fingers and approached, keeping low. He took the jug and held it up, and the boy crept forward like a stray animal.

“When they come to you,” Haris had said, “you’ve already won.”

Charon held the water jug to the boy’s lips, watching as he struggled to swallow even the faintest trickle. He’d been without water for some time, then. He hadn’t eaten much, either, and by the way he sat, favoring his left leg, his foot was injured as well.

“Careful,” Charon said. “You’ll have more when I’ve seen your hands.”

The boy was so lulled by Charon’s dominance by now that he placidly held out his hands when Charon set down the jug.

Charon had been right—someone had been torturing the boy, albeit without the rigid structure of the Arkoudai interrogators.

The boy hissed in pain once or twice, but by the time Charon was done wrapping his swollen fingers, some of the panic had ebbed in his eyes.

Charon fed him a little more water, then set the jug down again. “Tell me who you are.”

“Jesse.”

“That’s good, Jesse. How old are you?”

“Fifteen,” Jesse said. Yves made another sound, and Charon kept his expression neutral.

“They say you set fire to the House of Silver,” Charon said.

“Was trying for the rest.” Jesse looked down at his hands. “It ain’t right, what they do.”

“They? Courtesans?”

“No. Them.” Jesse’s brows narrowed. “The nobles. The ones who run it all. They said they’d give me a place to stay. Food to eat.”

Charon glanced at Yves. Even when teenagers took apprenticeships in pleasure houses, like Laurent de Rue had, they didn’t see clients until they were of age. “You were in one of those houses?”

“No. Different ones, near Red Harbor.” Jesse blinked quickly, and he raised his hands to clumsily rub his eyes with his wrist. “A noble there said he’s starting houses like they have here.

He said it would make us rich.” He hunched his shoulders.

“I didn’t earn a copper, when I could’ve done more working the docks on my own.

So I stole from the kitchen on my way out, and they… hurt me.”

Charon could feel Yves looking at him. Pleasure houses had to be approved by the crown.

Plenty of illegal brothels existed— there was no way to avoid that—but nobles were banned from starting any without the crown’s knowledge.

It could ignite a civil war between the lower and upper classes, and there were far more commoners than nobles.

“Do you know the noble’s name?” Charon asked. “What they looked like?”

“I don’t know. I thought he was pretty at first. Tall. Dresses nice. He didn’t give me his name. We all just called him sir.”

“Can you describe the house?” Charon asked.

The boy frowned. “The door was blue.”

Slowly, Charon eased as much information from Jesse as he could.

The boy’s memory was fogged by terror, but Charon pieced together a rough estimate of who he was and why he’d thought setting fire to the Pleasure District would free him.

The noble who’d tormented him had spoken of coming “back” to Duciel, and Jesse had thought that meant he was in charge of one of the houses in the Pleasure District.

He’d meant to burn them all, and Charon suspected that he’d thought that dying by fire would be more merciful for a courtesan than what he’d endured.

“They hang firebugs at the harbor,” Jesse said at last, “even though the king said no one gets hanged no more. Will they do that to me?”

“No,” Charon said. “I’ll do what I can to help you.”

Jesse sighed. “You’re not really from here, are you? I can tell. You still think they won’t hurt me if you ask them nice enough.”

When Charon finally stood, his knees cracked in protest. He helped the boy onto the cot, then turned to Yves. Yves looked on the verge of tears. Charon pulled him to his feet, and when he brought Yves to the cell door, he found the guard had fallen asleep in his chair.

“That’s comforting,” Yves said.

Charon shook the guard awake before he led Yves up the steps, but the soothing effect of his dominance would probably last for a while. When they emerged into the cool night air, he let go so Yves could walk off and kick a stone across the street.

“Whoever did that to him deserves to be ripped to shreds by dogs,” Yves snarled. He was crying, tracks running through the makeup he wore to hide his freckles. “I’m not saying he was right to do it, but his hands… He’s fifteen.”

“I know,” Charon said.

“I’m sorry. I should have asked questions myself.” Yves sighed heavily. “You shouldn’t have had to do that by yourself. It has to fuck you up, using your dominance like that.”